Bouts of Rain

I woke to heavy rain in the middle of the night. Well, early morning, really. The late evening hours had dragged into midnight and when at last I stumbled upstairs I lay in my bed surrounded by all the dark of loneliness. My poor dog, my faithful companion, is getting arthritic in the evenings, so I hadn’t urged her to walk up the stairs. I didn’t want to hear her whimper. It is always odd not having her there, though, the warm body of a creature who cares for me. My gratitude for dogs really cannot be expressed. Dogs love so willingly.

The rain wasn’t falling then, in the minutes of thought on my pillow, imaginings of another life with more people in it, more dogs, perhaps, and a horse or two. Daydreams can be a solace but at the times when they collide with the very reality of reality they can be horrid, a painful contrast, a look at what can’t be compared with what is. We all have these times, don’t we? When what’s good in our lives fades, and can’t be seen in the pressing gray of disappointments, and we are too tired to fight against the way we feel, and part of it is that we want the right to feel this way, after all.

In between sleeping and waking the rain started, pushed by wind, seemingly in fits and starts, heavy and light. The dog whined at the bottom of the stairs, so I went and got her, and felt glad for her. She snuggled up next to me and then, warm in the fleece and down, I wondered if the rabbits were sheltered enough. I dreamed of one of them chewing through his cage and escaping. I woke and thought perhaps they really ought to have more to protect them from the rain, but it was late/early and that rain fell heavy. I thought about it and then the rain subsided a little and feeling like a guilty, lazy person I pulled on muck boots over my pajamas, strapped on a headlamp, and went out into the eery blue. My plucky rabbits stood up on their hind legs to see me, and the two I had worried about were more damp than they should be. I propped wood against and over their cages and gave them little strokes on the forehead. “Poor darlings.” Though it wasn’t that cold. Thank goodness.

Back upstairs. Back to bed. In the slow morning the neighbor dog came over with her joyful wriggle of being. I started a fire. Put on the coffee. Watched the dogs play in their mouthy way. Decided I would write, because that is part of who I am, a part I can have some level of control over, no matter where I live or what I do or how I feel.

So then. So it is. Almost always, when I make the space to write, I can feel my very self start to settle, to orient itself within the tumble of this world. Writing, before it became a discipline, a major, a career move – before all that, writing came from a little girl’s instinct, a sort of unspoken and unidentified sense that this was something I could and must do. Pen in hand, fingertips on a keyboard, images becoming words becoming story – here is one of the ways that I remember who I am. Here is a partial fulfillment of the person a Very Good Creator made me to be. Yet without pressure; pressure gets pushed aside, and perfection is not the point, or the goal, or the reason why. Here I find my old, hopeful self. Reminding me: Do your gift. And keep dreaming. Bring as many dreams into reality as you can.